You got your removal permit. The condition says plant a replacement tree, so you head to a garden centre. A nice ornamental maple, or a young conifer pulled off the seasonal display, looks right on the lot and still gets bounced back by Urban Forestry. Urban Forestry checks stem form and stock size, plus whether the plan reads like something the city would plant itself. We covered the species side in an earlier post.
Toronto’s Own Plant Palette Signals What Passes
Toronto publishes a species list for its own street planting. That list is the closest thing to a working answer sheet. The Species Planted on Streets page names maples, oaks, hackberry, katsura, yellowwood, London plane, and more. Each entry carries native status and mature size. A separate engineering standard drawing, T-850.026-3 (Rev 0, September 2021), carries its own palette: 28 tree codes with botanical name, native status, size class, hardiness, and per-species comments. The two lists are not identical. The drawing adds Ginkgo and White ‘Valley Forge’ Elm, lists only four oaks (no Shumard), and uses Little Leaf Linden in place of ‘Glenleven’.
Some of those comments matter more than the species name itself. Ruby Red horsechestnut, Yellow Buckeye, Ohio Buckeye, Common Horsechestnut, Northern Catalpa: all five carry a direct warning against planting next to a ravine or natural area, because the species can move into that area on its own. Honeylocust ‘Skyline’ and the linden varieties carry a separate invasive-potential flag with the same ravine restriction. If your lot backs onto a ravine, expect a second look at these species.
Toronto plants only the non-pod-producing male ‘Espresso’ cultivar of Kentucky Coffeetree in residential areas, never the straight species, and the city may substitute cultivars of listed species where appropriate.
Co-Dominant Stems Get Rejected Before Species Even Comes Up
The stock itself can fail on structure alone, before a reviewer even gets to whether your species choice is appropriate. Toronto’s street-tree installation standard, drawing T-850.026-1 (Rev 0, September 2021), states it outright as a planting note: trees with co-dominant stems will be rejected.
That note governs city street stock, but it’s still the cheapest test to run on your own nursery stock before it goes into a plan. A young tree with two stems splitting low and roughly equal in size is exactly the kind of thing a big-box garden centre sells as a “full” looking specimen. Ask your nursery for single-leader stock. If a tree already shows a fork near the base, don’t plant it as your replacement tree, no matter how well the species fits everything else.
Size Is the Rule Homeowners Miss
Toronto’s how-to-apply page for a tree or ravine permit sets a minimum replacement stock size: 50 millimetre caliper for deciduous trees, 1.75 to 2.5 metres in height for coniferous trees, timed to the next spring or fall planting season.
That floor rules out a lot of what a homeowner might otherwise buy. A small ornamental in a nursery pot won’t clear it, and neither will the two-foot evergreen picked up at a fall sale, because both land under 50 millimetre caliper or 1.75 metres.
Chapter 813’s replanting figures back the same standard from the enforcement side. Cash-in-lieu runs $583 per tree under section 813-20.B(2), set at 120 percent of the cost to plant and maintain a tree for two years. Trees that do go in the ground carry a two-year plant-and-maintain obligation under 813-20.A, F, and G. Those are the figures in force now. What is changing is the ratio applied to unauthorized removal. The City’s contravention page sets a flat 5-to-1 ratio under Chapter 813. A February 2026 staff report replaces it with a diameter-based ratio from 5-to-1 up to about 23-to-1, effective September 1, 2026, with no published table. There’s no “1 tree per 10 cm DBH” formula anywhere in the bylaw. The minimum ratio is one replacement per tree removed. The specific ratios sit in staff procedure, not in the bylaw text itself.
A Free LEAF Tree Doesn’t Automatically Satisfy Your Permit
Toronto’s 311 knowledge base points residents toward two free planting options for private property. Under the Toronto Free Tree Program, a household can pick up to two free trees or shrubs each spring and fall. Community groups, not individual lots, get the Neighbourhood Planting Program and its free native trees and shrubs. The same article names LEAF, Local Enhancement and Appreciation of Forests, as the city’s partnered subsidized planting service. It does not say that program trees satisfy a permit condition, and the stock sizes show why. Free Tree Program stock is 1 to 4 feet in 1 or 2 gallon pots, far below the permit floor of 50 mm caliper for deciduous trees and 1.75 to 2.5 m for conifers. A program tree counts as an extra planting, not toward the condition.
LEAF’s Full Service Backyard Tree Planting program, delivered with support from the city’s Urban Forestry branch, plants native species only, at $160 to $230 per tree full-service (plus HST), or $110 to $180 DIY. Deciduous stock runs 5 to 8 feet. Evergreen stock runs 2 to 4 feet, roughly 0.6 to 1.2 metres. That is well under the 1.75 to 2.5 metre floor Toronto sets for conifers. A LEAF evergreen, on its own, sits well under the size a permit condition needs. Treat a LEAF conifer as an addition to a replanting plan, not the whole of it.
Ravine Lots Face a Stricter Native-Species Bar
Everything above applies to an ordinary backyard removal. A ravine-adjacent property is a different case. So is anything inside the Ravine Protected Area or Natural Heritage System under a development application. Toronto Green Standard version 4’s low-rise residential criteria set 100 percent native planting as a Tier 1 mandatory requirement within that protected area, with at least half of it from a regionally appropriate seed source. The same version sets a minimum 50 percent native requirement for general on-site landscaping, covering trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants. For new applications submitted on or after June 2, 2026, the City’s page marks that criterion voluntary. The 100 percent native requirement inside the protected area carries no such note.
That standard governs development applications, not an ordinary homeowner permit for a single backyard tree. But it explains why a reviewer looking at a ravine-adjacent replanting plan reads it differently than one on a standard interior lot. The palette restrictions on horsechestnuts, buckeyes, catalpa, honeylocust and linden matter most there.
Urban Forestry Checks Size and Stem Form First
A plan that names a species without checking caliper, height, and stem form against these standards comes back with a follow-up request. Our tree removal permit reports include the replanting plan as part of the submission package, sized and specified to match what Urban Forestry checks, and if your lot can’t fit the required trees at all, see our cash-in-lieu breakdown. Contact us with your property address and permit reference number, and we’ll confirm scope before the site visit.